The New China Syndrome

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 22, 2002

BEIJING -- After seeing people around him gloating at the humbling of America in the Sept. 11 attacks, a Nanjing University student wrote an essay about this growing Chinese nationalism.

"What makes me despair is that at the same time these terrorist hijackers were gleefully smiling, at least half of our compatriots were loudly laughing," he wrote.

"Patriotism has virtually become part of our blood," he added. "But when I see that patriotism has become a banner for the abandonment of humanity, I suddenly feel afraid: What country and people is it that I love? Could a country and people like this one day move toward true terrorism and Nazism?"

The student is exactly right in seeing this antagonistic nationalism arising from the government's "patriotic education" campaigns and propaganda. When President Bush visits Beijing next month, he needs to raise the matter with President Jiang Zemin. It was President Jiang who launched the effort in 1990 to cultivate nationalism as a new unifying ideology for China, and he needs to know that we find this abuse of the education and propaganda systems unacceptable.

Education in China has improved dramatically, along with almost every aspect of Chinese life, and some Shanghai public schools now are better than some New York City public schools. But China still teaches history as a series of guo chi, or national humiliations. And this leads many Chinese to see everything — the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade, the landing of the American spy plane in Hainan, even trade negotiations — as another guo chi.

It is outrageous that the Chinese authorities continue to hold exhibitions falsely asserting that the United States used biological weapons against Chinese during the Korean War. For that matter, it is time that China stopped referring to the Korean War as "the War to Resist America and Help Korea."

The Chinese government's continuing suggestions that we deliberately bombed its embassy, or that the spy plane's recklessness led to the crash, needlessly inflame public opinion. Paradoxically, we're also hurt by a freer Chinese press: some quasi-private Chinese tabloids have the capitalist instinct, and because of the fervor to sell papers they are the ones with the most jingoistic stories.

One hopeful sign is that some Chinese intellectuals are themselves standing up to call for systemic change. An open letter by 27 prominent scholars denounced the gloating by compatriots after the terror attacks — while saying that this was a minority response — and added:

"We believe that one of the causes of this reaction is that for some time certain news media and educational concepts have misled people. For this reason, we call for a thorough reflection on every aspect of our public sphere, education, propaganda and news media."

In particular, China needs to stop inculcating a hatred for those it calls the Riben guizi, or Japanese devils. With schools, films, television and the entire propaganda network fulminating about Japan, the hostility is becoming dangerous.

Recently, a famous actress named Zhao Wei had her picture in a Chinese fashion magazine wearing a dress resembling the wartime Japanese flag. The result was that Ms. Zhao has become a national pariah. She was physically attacked and had feces thrown at her during a live television performance. The authorities ousted her from the Chinese New Year television celebration and fired one of the fashion magazine's editors.

In a China that is steadily becoming more open, jingoistic public opinion increasingly matters. One danger is that a hostile nationalism will box the government in and increase the risk of conflict with the United States over Taiwan, or with Japan over a set of disputed islands known to Tokyo as the Senkaku and to Beijing as the Diaoyu.

President Jiang himself is not trying to nurture xenophobia. But his efforts to use nationalism as a new unifying ideology risk having that effect.

One of the greatest challenges for the global community will be to manage the rise of China. President Bush must try to make Mr. Jiang realize that this process will go more smoothly if China modernizes not only its financial system and highway network, but also its propaganda apparatus, so that it promotes international harmony rather than hatred.